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002 // text; username: grollschwert

cw: chronic illness, ruminations on death

Fun one for you tonight.

[this message comes in the middle of the night, when no one in their right mind should be awake. but that's never stopped anna. she can't sleep, and if flynn and ruby and everybody are right then she has to at least try not to keep this stuff inside her at all times. sorrow's silence we needn't bear, or whatever.]

You know a girl. Her body is breaking down and her meds are failing her.
She has years left. Maybe months, if it gets worse.
But something happens, and she gets access to amazing new technology. Things that prevent her body from attacking itself.
Things that stop her timer from ticking faster than everyone else's.
Great, right?
You get to know her better. You entertain her little crush on you. Maybe you like her back a little and maybe things aren't gonna be so bad.

But one day, you do something.
Something that sets off a chain of events that you couldn't have predicted. Not in a million years.
Small things collide into medium things collide into big huge massive things.
And after the butterfly version of you is done flapping its wings, she doesn't have access to that technology anymore.
She's back on the timer.

She doesn't know you did anything.
She never finds out.
You can't bring yourself to tell her, and she wouldn't believe it if you did.

She barely recognizes you anymore, by the end of it.
Her family finds your name on her phone and invites you to pay respects.

Do you still go to her funeral?

Did you kill her?

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Confession, huh?

[she's familiar with the idea. das Bußsakrament was something she did a handful of times in earnest before she started just going through the motions every Lent, and she hasn't even set foot inside a church for over a decade now.]

Don't know if I'm eager to lay all this down at the feet of a priest in a religion that might not even want me to exist. [still. she doesn't discount it, and she knows a minister.] And keeping everything inside until it explodes out like this in the middle of the night probably isn't... super healthy, even if it's all my choice. ['cause she makes some bad choices.]

That's just how that habit stays sharp, right? [using his words again.] You teach it to cut through you from inside and it gets real good at doing exactly that.

Confession, yes. If there remain wicked deeds to be confessed--but she is also help for the other ways one might become wrong with the universe.

[A priest in a religion that might not even want me to exist. He makes a note of that.

And then he laughs quietly at her use of his words.]

Yes, this is so. Which is why we must learn to deprive it of its chances. One way is to share, another to confess, another to sit with grief and regret and listen to what they tell you without using them to wound yourself anew.

This, the Volkhv is likewise good for.

But who would wish that you do not exist?

Oh, like. Don't worry about that, dude, I'm just gay. It's a whole thing with some religions where I'm from.

[totally got her kicked out of her house at 19 for it, but, like, whatever.]

If you've got one that offers a lot of the same benefits but isn't gonna try to damn me to Hell for kissing other girls, or hit me with any of that "hate the sin love the sinner" bullshit, then, like. [her hand idly waves. she's not wild about religion even if it does accept her, but.] I guess I'm listening.

Ahhh. [No more than a breath of a sound. He'd been concerned it had something to do with the Disciples here; this is less immediately threatening but...far sadder.] I have heard of this thing now and again. But the universe does not care who you might bed so long as you do honor to your line.

Though, I am sorry to say, I am only a zhrets; I could not perform the adoption if you wished to be one of us. [Leaving entirely aside that he's probably the only shrike here and had no line of his own to adopt anyone into.

And then, with a faint note of amusement,] And we are all going to Hell, regardless. This may also be a problem, yes?

Edited (fixin a cultural note there) 2021-12-02 04:52 (UTC)

Oh, for real? That's how it works in your religion? [not judgmental at all. she seems more surprised that there's no concept of a good place where he's from. there's probably some religions that don't have a bad place, but this is new.]

Maybe we are all going to Hell. Maybe some of us have already been. Maybe this is Hell. [she's joking, though, moving past it quickly.] I don't know. Never cared much about it for myself. I know it helps out other people, but, like. [the way she says this next part isn't as heavy as the other times she's brought up her dead friend.] I know where Lil's body is. She's not going anywhere.

Yes, though if you are thinking of the hell of endless torment for sinners they believe in who follow the Slain God, it is not this. Navia is no worse than Trench and better than being trapped forever in one's corpse.

So I had certainly thought yes, we might already be in Hell, but the ocean does not stink enough for that. [Also a joke.]

Her soul is with her body still, then? [He actually sounds distressed at the thought.]

[and not for the first time tonight, the question gives her pause. her own glibness betrays her once again. maybe... it isn't.]

Other souls were floating free in the universe for our bodies to just get filled with them. [there's the sound of her sitting up, and her mumbling sounds like she's trying to think through a complicated math problem.] It wasn't an apocalypse, but maybe it didn't have to be. Maybe that's just the easiest way to find a lot of souls. If they're strong enough to survive...

Goddammit, dude. [her attention is back to the call now and even if she's sounding more animated, it's hard to tell whether it's a good thing.] Her soul could just be waiting to hitch a ride in another vessel like me.

[He has enough practice with asking disquieting questions--intentionally or not--that he should be a mage at it by now.

He tucks the mumbled commentary away for later, whether to ask questions of it directly or compare it with the rest of what she's explained to her other respondents. No information was useless.]

I take it, this is not ordinary birth you speak of--but she would become someone's second soul, as you have two?

[Is that a good thing?]

She... might.

[it's hard to think about, because she doesn't really want to imagine the soul of lillian already intertwined with labrys getting thrust inside a third, unsuspecting, unrelated person. it still wouldn't be lillian, in the end. just like how she isn't A2. her voice calms down a little, gets more of a somber tone to it again.]

Third soul, if the other one is still resonating somewhere deep down in a way that she... somehow stopped being able to feel. I don't know if that's what she would want. [a pause, as her hand curls against her chest.] I don't know if I'd wish this on anyone new.

Mmm. So it was not also forgetting you, but losing touch with her other soul? Or, these were part of the same thing?

I understand why you would not. [Wish it on another person.] It sounds, that as much as you have gained from it, you have also lost something to that other part within you. A sense of your own wholeness, perhaps?

Though this is all--these are not things I am familiar with, so I only speculate. There are very few cases, on Nephele, where one might end up with another being as part of her self. [And none of them ended well.

Certainly his own stint with Eyes' will in place of his own hadn't.]

[no, he's. not entirely wrong. and again, he's a brand new person to her no matter how much it feels otherwise right now, but she's vulnerable, she's tearing at wounds. she can afford to let a little more go.]

It's just... like, you aren't totally wrong. I just haven't heard from her in a while. [saying it is one of the hardest things she's done in some time, but even she can't bring it to the natural fear lying underneath the statement.] But I know I didn't forget anyone or anything like the others did, so it's different. From what happened to Lillian.

I know I'm more complete, like as a person, when A2 is living inside me. But I know I'm different from a lot of other people. And I know how long it took me to feel that way.

[They're far off into territory beyond both his practical experience as a necromancer and theological understanding as a mere zhrets. Souls were, on Nephele, and they departed on death to Navia and returned from it on rebirth. Occupying a body that already had its own soul wasn't something anyone had ever observed them to do.

Though what she describes doesn't sound all that alien to him. Isn't, really, from a certain angle.]

Ahh. As when you have found a very dear friend or lover--you did not know, before you met her, that she belonged in your life; but when she is gone, it is like missing a limb.

[He understands that.] I am sorry. To feel that loss for someone outside you, knowing that time and distance and death were always going to separate her from you--it seems it would be worse, when it is a part of you that you believed could not be stolen in that way.

[Uncertainty intensified every fear, every pain.]

[the way he describes it sends a pang of want through her entire body, and without realizing it comes through on the call, she sighs wistfully.]

That's exactly what she is.

[someone she loved. loves. someone she wants to protect, to give a better ending to, to usher into a better life than the one either of them came from. christ. it was love the whole time.]

Goddammit. I need to stop having these revelations. Can't believe how obvious all of this is to literally everyone else but me.

[He doesn't laugh at her realization; that would come across as unkind, however he meant it. But there is a hint of a smile in his voice as he replies,]

This is what an outside perspective is for, no? To see what is inside you that you are too close to recognize.

There is no shame in this. If we were meant to be perfect and all-knowing in ourselves, Generation would not have thought up more than one of us.

Yeah... yeah. God. [if he won't laugh, she will, dry and breathy and tired.]

Don't know how many times I'm gonna need to hear that I shouldn't be doing all this alone before it sticks. But thanks. Just for, like. God. [she doesn't even know how to say this.] Helping me realize all of this stuff, one after another, constantly. It's like getting in the ring with a heavyweight and just getting the shit kicked out of me.

[and hopefully her smile comes through in her voice.] But in a good way.

[That description does get him to laugh with her, because it is familiar even in slightly different words.] Then it seems I am being a credit to my teachers, who have pummeled me often enough this way. A good way, yes, but bruising.

You are welcome. Your thoughts are quiet enough you might rest, now?

I don't think I'm getting back to sleep anytime soon, but my thoughts are definitely a lot quieter, yeah.

[it would be a shame if she got out of this without at least sharing her name and getting his in turn. he could be a pretty good friend, she thinks.]

Thanks for talking me through it. My name's Anna, just, like, by the way. I think I'm the only one around here.

I am glad of that much. [He'd lived too often in the center of one of those self-cannibalizing feeding frenzies to wish it on anyone else, for any amount of time.]

Well met, Anna. You are very welcome for the help.

And my people--we do not burden others with our names, when first we meet. But if there is something you wish to call me, I will answer to this.

[yeah, the extreme cultural differences sound about right. she smiles on her end; she won't press.]

I'll just call you omni user givemeyourown for now. Thanks, dude. Hopefully we run into each other again when I'm not a mess.

[He set himself up for that one, didn't he. Though it's certainly not the weirdest nickname he's ever acquired.

He's smiling, too, when he replies.]

This is my hope as well. Until then, may your stars watch over you. Or the Moon Presence, as suits her.

[Even if they don't manage to meet up in the time intervening, she's definitely getting some gifts at the end of the year.]

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